The “NGOs” that spooked Egypt

[arely staircase]

History shows that the country is right to regard some U.S.-backed aid organizations warily

Back in the day, the CIA secretly funded, sometimes created, and often ran supposedly private, nongovernmental organizations to make propaganda and provide cover for covert operations all over the world. ........

...the Reagan administration and a bipartisan majority of Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. The new law stipulated that NED would work largely through three newly created “core grantees” – the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) – and the AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute, which had a long history of working closely with the CIA.....

So what did these not exactly nongovernmental organizations do in Egypt?...

Will Egyptians – and Americans – believe that a U.S. government-funded “NGO” does not share information with U.S. officials or take its marching orders from them? For many, it’s a hard sell given the nearly 70 years in which the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have made covert use of real and purpose-built “civil society” groups.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/07/the_ngos_that_spooked_egypt/